


would you change it if you could?

by crystallized



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Hellmouth Sunbeams (Blaseball Team), M/M, New York Millennials (Blaseball Team), POV Second Person, Recreational Drug Use, Seattle Garages (Blaseball Team)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:07:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27293944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystallized/pseuds/crystallized
Summary: Twelve years (seven moments) in the life of Randall Marijuana, from adaptation to liberation.
Relationships: Dominic Marijuana & Randall Marijuana, Theodore Duende/Randall Marijuana, background Andrew Solis/Dominic Marijuana
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	would you change it if you could?

**Author's Note:**

> All I do over siesta is write blaseball fic and cry. Characterization and storylines pulled from the RP but I messed with them quite a bit for my own purposes. Can be considered to take place in the same universe as [carry all this broken bone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27217768) but stands on its own perfectly well. Thanks to the Starburst Alliance for lore-checking me—I'm just a Mills fan manifesting my love for the desert through a boy with the last name Marijuana.

######  **I. Adaptation**

Dom’s standing on the sidewalk when you arrive, looking the wrong way as usual. You’ve been here so many times but he never learns, and when you clap your hand on his shoulder he whirls around in surprise and looks at you with a blank stare. He really doesn’t recognize you, then. How the fuck. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t what it told you would happen.

“Randy?” You nod. “What the fuck?”

“Honestly, Dom, asking myself the same. You shouldn’t…it’s easier to show you, probably. Can we go in?”

“You want to see the _team_ looking like this? Randy they’re gonna-”

“They won’t.” You don’t wait, climb up the stairs with your backpack in hand, call the old elevator to take you up. You know some of the team - Patty, Drac, Scorp, Wes, Bendie - and they know you, but only as an adult, only as a blaseball player and as Dom’s little brother. That has to be why Dom remembers. It has to be.

Patty’s in the kitchen when you walk in, and she waves. “Hey, Randy.” If you laugh at Dom’s baffled look you’ll give the whole thing up. “Staying for long?”

“Just a few days, Patty. Nobody minds if I crash?”

“Of course not,” Thomas replies, sweeping out from behind her. “How’s Hellmouth? The team?” Beside you, Dom mouths the word _Hellmouth_? You keep an eye on him while you make small talk before excusing yourself and Dom to his room. He slams the door and doesn’t look happy. 

“You shouldn’t slam it, Dom, Bendie’ll-“

“What the _fuck_ , Randall Marijuana, is happening?” Okay. Full name. Got it. “What’s wrong with your skin? You have horns! Randy, what? They opened the Book, Jaylen Hotdogfingers is _dead_ , and nobody else remembers Moab? The team thinks this is normal? What on earth is Hellmouth?” Oh. You didn’t get it. He’s not mad, he’s panicking. Dom in a panic spiral as the only person who remembers Moab is not going to go well. But. You’re taller, now, the Hellmouth made you stronger, so you push him down into a chair hoping it’ll stun enough for silence. It doesn’t, but at least he pauses and cracks a grin when you shuffle through your bag and chuck the blue tin at him. “These yours?”

“Would I ever give you gummies I didn’t make myself? I’m still me, Dom. I remember.” You sit on his bed, and it’s weird, you’re not used to your new center of gravity even though you know it tried to fix that, too. The others didn’t have this problem. “Okay, so. Hellmouth. Can you just. Listen. And then ask your questions?” He nods and hands you back the tin, and you try to explain what happened. How things have changed. You show him your jersey, your old photos, street signs and the Solarium. You make him pull out your letters. You don’t tell him about the voice, but you tell him about the team, Lars and Zack and Gomi and Rhys, you’ve all been changed just, some more than others. The air turned different, more threatening, more wild—living in the desert was never easy but now it’s dangerous. Whatever it was that killed Hotdogfingers, that brought the eclipse—the world is different now. True to his word to a fault, Dom listens, and then he speaks.

“Well, that’s it, you’re moving here now.” What? You must make a face, or he just knows you too well. “Randy, you can’t stay there, not if it’s dangerous. Come back home. Coach the blittle league, or find something new entirely. It’s a big city.” There’s a look in his eyes that says he knows you won’t agree, and you don’t. You like New York but not like Dom does; you never loved its awful weather or crowds, you never came to love the worst parts of the city anywhere close to the way your brother does. You love the desert, the summer winds, the silence, the way the heat infuses every inch of you, it’s warm, it’s comforting, it’s home. You always belonged to the desert even before you moved, and the Hellmouth hasn’t changed that—if anything, you belong to the desert now more than ever, now that it’s blessed and cursed you. 

“I’m not, Dom, I…” How can you explain? “You love it here, right?”

“Of course,” he replies, confused.

“It’s comforting, right? When you fly in and see the city below you, when you land and you know that you’re home, that you know New York and you know how to live here?” It’s not quite the same, but it’ll suffice. “That’s what it was always like for me, out there, and if anything the Hellmouth made it stronger. I feel connected when I’m there. It feels right.” That much, at least, Dom can understand. You don’t need him to agree, you’re a grown man and still contractually obligated to the Beams, but it’s nice to see him nod and lean back in the chair instead of continuing to argue with you about it.

You stay for three days and leave with a promise to Dom to call at least once a month and let him know you’re okay. It’s the least you can do.

  


######  **II. Precognition**

You were never a great team as the Moab Sunbeams, but you certainly weren’t the worst in the league. The Hellmouth Sunbeams, though, are widely considered to be the in the running for the worst team in the league overall, and there’s not much argument any of you can make about that. You try your best, you mourn the lost, and you go get smoothies after the game when you’re home. 

It’s just. Difficult, to be away from Hellmouth for very long. Everyone calls it the Tug and nobody knows where the name comes from but they all know what it means. Most of the team can go about a week before feeling it—Zack and Miguel a little longer, Layna and Malik a little shorter, no two people are the same—and once it starts it only gets worse. The Hellmouth protects its own but to do that you have to be near it (or so the whispers claim but you have your doubts—you watched Rhys and Vela both burn in the middle of the Solarium, how is that protection?) and, well, the ILB isn’t the most accommodating. Even after a couple years on siesta this was a rough one, another 24-game away stretch, another two and a half weeks and the whole team had headaches by the end between the ache of the Tug and the noise of the Feedback. If you make it home in time the Tug just vanishes and everything feels right again, but when you’re away that long it leaves an ache that lingers for a day or two, like jet lag in your heart. You didn’t perform well in the games after getting home from a stretch like that the first time, when the Tug and your connection to the Hellmouth were so new. It only got worse this time.

It’s better now, though, you’ve been home for a little while and things feel good. The team is all grouped up in the VIP box in the Solarium for drinks and snacks and strategy discussion, or at least, as much strategy discussion as you can have without knowing the outcome of the elections. Horne’s talking about baserunning, something about how they hold their arms, and Nerd’s doing what they do best whenever anyone talks about running, which is heckle, when you feel—something. Vibrations. You look around but everyone’s still looking and laughing at Horne and Nerd, is it just you? Wait. Off in the corner, Gomi’s frowning, and Emmett…where did Emmett go? Something’s not right. You try to stand but the world spins and you fall back into the couch, the air is blurry at the edges of Iggy’s arms where he’s waving them at Malik and then—nothing.

You wake. Do you? Your eyes don’t feel open but they don’t feel closed either. Do you still have eyes? When you try to move it feels like you’re moving but nothing changes. You—walk, if what you do can be called walking, but your feet never find purchase nor do you ever stumble. You’re in an endless abyss of nothing. You are, you realize suddenly, in the Hellmouth. 

“Hello?” You think you say. You move your mouth the way you would to speak the word and feel it come out of your throat but hear nothing, not even the echo of speech in your own skull. You feel like you should panic but you can’t bring yourself to be scared. There’s no pain, and you’re warm—like the first time you stepped off the plane in Salt Lake and felt the desert heat that had you know you’d come back someday. You were seventeen and it was the first time you’d ever felt warm down to your soul and just like that, it had its hooks in you. 

HELLO, you…hear? Sense? You understand. There was no sound and yet you know something said hello to you, a whisper right against your mind. RANDALL MARIJUANA, WOULD YOU BE GIVEN A GIFT?

“Is it…what is it?” 

DESTINY.

You’re talking to the Hellmouth and you aren’t afraid. Destiny is…a big word, it could mean anything, it could mean nothing. You’re not sure you believe in destiny, or fate, or luck or anything of the sort. But when you were seventeen you knew you’d return to the desert, and you’ve already been tied to it forever, and if destiny won’t take you away from your brother or Hellmouth, at least not forever—and the moment you think it you know that it won’t—then yeah, okay. Destiny.

You open your eyes on one of the couches in the VIP lounge. You still feel so warm. Gomi and Emmett are there too, and the TV says you’ve been granted a blessing by the ILB. How about that.

  


######  **III. Realization**

A year to the day after you talked to the Hellmouth, you wake up in Seattle, screaming. 

“Randy?” Teddy. “Randy, fuck, hey, wake up.” You’re awake. You’re terrified. You are not in control. “Randy, shh, hey, it’s okay.” You take a breath, and your body breathes. Okay. Good first step. You turn towards Teddy and meet his eyes and, okay, you’re breathing, his hand is warm on your shoulder and you use it to ground yourself. Awake. But of course, by now you know better. That was no regular dream. Do you tell him? You should tell him. You told him about Emmett. The leagues have changed now; it’s statistically pretty unlikely he’ll be anywhere near you when it happens. It might be safe. It might be dangerous.

“Hey, Teds,” you whisper, curling back up closer to him. “Sorry.” Your phone buzzes on the bedside table and you don’t need to look to know who it is. You don’t even make a move towards it, just, shiver, burrow into his arms further, but when you look up Teddy’s just…looking at you. Shit. You don’t bother to protest as he reaches past you to grab your phone—he can’t unlock it himself, but he does turn the screen towards you to show exactly what you expected: three texts, Nagomi Nava. You sigh, and he puts it down on the bed, wraps his arm all the way around your shoulders.

“Are you going to tell me what you saw, or do I have to guess?” His tone is so sad it breaks your heart all over again. Of course you’re going to tell him, now that Gomi gave you away. Knowing her, she did it on purpose. 

“You know you can’t change it though, babe? If it wasn’t important I wouldn’t know.” The three of you spent a lot of time in the VIP lounge that day after you received your precognition, comparing experiences and trying to make sense of it all. Gomi and Emmett also heard the voice of the Hellmouth, also had something that neither were willing to call a conversation with it. Mentions of destiny, of the future, of protection and guidance, of some kind of plan that was important—you weren’t surprised that the other two got more out of it than you did, so preoccupied with your brother and the Hellmouth itself. Emmett had to be somewhere for the fate of the world, and Gomi for the Hellmouth and the Beams, but you didn’t think to ask what you needed to do. You guess now you have some idea.

The team was in Hades the first time you had the shared dream, of fire in the sky and then fire on the field, of Emmett’s death and the horrible thing that would replace him on the team, the cursed mask of the rogue umpire as it turned to face where Emmett stood and Sandy’s screams coming too late to change a thing. You got together and made a pact to not tell the team, and you were able to write off your distraction to everyone with your new relationship, with Teddy’s daring kiss and your first date in Seattle. You even managed to hide it from Dom when you were in New York (the first time your teams ever faced each other, and wasn’t that a fucked up twist of fate) but there came a point where you snapped, Teddy’s last night in Hellmouth, and you took him home and told him everything and let him distract you from the dreams of suffering. The team was in Hades when it happened and there was never a damn thing you could do about it.

“I can’t pretend to understand, Randy, you know that.” Being held by Teddy is the safest you ever feel outside Hellmouth, is the thing. You can still feel the remnant of the fire behind your closed eyes but for the most part he washes all of it away, a calm and steady lake of a presence to ease your firey one. He links his fingers with yours, presses a kiss to the side of your neck. “I don’t understand everything you see in these dreams, or why the three of you have chosen as you have to let things happen to you, but I don’t have it. I’ve never talked to that giant hole in the ground and I don’t want to. You tell me what you need, love, and I’m here for you.” Your will to hold back tears breaks, then, and a terrible sob runs through the length of your body. He holds you tight as you cry all over him. Gods, you’re so scared. You have to tell him. You can’t tell Dom and you can’t cry with Nagomi; you need to tell Teddy and hope he can handle it. You take a deep breath.

“It’s going to be cold when I die.”

  


######  **IV. Incineration**

It _is_ cold in Breckinridge today. This part, the being away from your team and not with anyone you really know or care for or anyone who knows or cares for you, this part was unexpected up until the start of that week when the dream changed, but the cold you made your peace with long ago.

It’s been a fucked up season, with the division changes. You saw Dom more this season than you did in the previous five, and didn’t get to catch a single night with your boyfriend—you called each other every night, but it wasn’t the same. You got to go home last week and say goodbye to Nagomi, see the rest of the team, pat the rock at the edge of the Solarium and thank it for everything, but it still hurt as the dreams got sharper and you came to understand exactly when and how you would come to be standing here in this moment. You’re scared. Not for yourself—you’ve lived this moment in dreams so many times that some part of you is relieved that this will be the last time—but for Teddy, and for Dom. Teddy’s team is planning something stupid, something that you don’t know for sure will have terrible consequences but you get a bad feeling in your gut every time he mentions it, and Dom…well, the new guy seems good for him. You talked to the Mills and you can trust them to work on it. Dom’s going to need someone, after.

You’re standing out in left field, in the same spot as Emmett—your one choice, and you wonder if anyone watching notices, know that Teddy will when he inevitably breaks down and watches the game even though he promised not to do it. There’s nobody on base and the rest of the Hands are having a good time, shouting jokes to each other that you don’t understand and won’t get the chance to understand, when you see the umpire turn towards you. Your fists clench involuntarily and you take a deep breath, and hold.

It hurts so much worse than you dreamed. You’ve set yourself on fire before, both before and after the Hellmouth, but only for fun and in as safe a manner as possible (as safe as setting yourself on fire for the fun of it can ever be, at least). This is not safe. This fire wraps around you lightning-fast and digs into your flesh, ripping and tearing away at your senses until you close your eyes to try to hide from the pain and then you feel nothing.

You wake. Do you? Your eyes don’t feel open but they don’t feel closed either. There’s no pain, and you’re warm. Wait. “Did you save me?” you ask, and in the back of your mind there’s a chuckle of amusement from the Hellmouth.

YOU ARE NEEDED. THERE IS ONE WHO WOULD ESCAPE HIS FATE AND HE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL. ONLY YOU CAN GET HIM WHERE HE NEEDS TO BE.

The Hellmouth doesn’t need to tell you who it’s talking about. “But…I also needed to die?”

YES. More amusement. YOU WILL BE CALLED UPON AS WELL. WHEN THE TIME IS RIGHT YOU WILL RETURN HERE ONCE MORE. Will you still have the dreams? How will you know? YOU WILL KNOW. 

“What should I do until then?” If a cosmic entity whose only form is a giant hole in the ground could shrug, and that shrug felt like something that could be named, that would be the word for the response you receive. You get the impression that the Hellmouth cares very little for the affairs of humans (mostly-humans) as long as you do what you’re told, and its silent laughter swiftly confirms your theory.

GET HIM WHERE HE NEEDS TO BE. BE HERE WHEN YOU NEED TO BE. THAT IS ALL THAT IS YOUR DESTINY, RANDALL. THE REST IS UP TO YOU.

You open your eyes in a familiar hallway. The pain is back, gods fuck you hurt absolutely everywhere, smoke is rising off your skin from the cold air and everything tastes like burning. You get the sense it’s been. A week? More? You aren’t sure. You sit up and knock on the door with what little strength you have available to you, and then collapse again. You’re not surprised when it’s Dom who answers the door, nor when you see how shaky and unsteady he looks, grief and drink in equal measure. You try to call out but don’t have any strength left to push through your voice—but he notices you at last, and the last thing you hear is your brother screaming for someone to help him before you faint away from the pain.

  


######  **V. Collection**

You knew what Unstable meant long before Ruby Tuesday—not because you knew about Ruby Tuesday, of course, but the dreams about Dom started the night after the first batter was hit. You were in the stands in Seattle when Jaylen hit three different batters with her pitches, and again that night you woke up in terror. It was a blessing that you didn’t scream, didn’t wake Teddy, because there was no way in hell you were willing tell him about the horror his team’s plan was about to unleash on the league. He went along with it but it was never his idea, he didn’t want to trade Mike for the long-dead pitcher he’d moved on from years ago. Teddy was too smart to not imagine that actions would have consequences, and that night you learned how right he was.

Wes freaked you out so much that the moment you thought Dom would be okay on his own you flew straight to Hellmouth, stood on the edge of the Solarium and screamed into the pit while the team was in Baltimore. You couldn’t believe that Dom was being forced to mourn Wes when a few months later he’d have to come to terms with dying himself; what kind of fucked up plan was that? The Hellmouth didn’t answer, but then again you didn’t expect anything from it. You knew it didn’t care beyond your part in the bargain, and so you were in the stands again when Jaylen hit Scorp and Moody and Zion and stayed by Teddy’s side when he learned that Jaylen’s debt had claimed its first victims. You held him in your arms that night and every other, as Jaylen hit more players, as former friends turned away from any member of the Garages, as the death toll stayed stagnant but the threat continued to grow, all the while remembering the way the fire felt and dreaming of how it would look when it took Dom too. Until a few nights ago, your first dreamless night in a long time and so you knew it was time.

The Mills were terrified. It was their only series against the Garages and it started with Jaylen pitching. They knew the weather coming up; they knew chances of survival would be slim if anyone was hit. Jaylen looked like she was in pain and you wondered then how much she knew about her own destiny, if she knew who she’d hit that game or if she’d hit someone at all. Maybe you’ll ask her, once you can go back to the Garages. The game tied up and the innings bled, 8, 9, 10, and then 11 and Dom stepped up to the plate and you couldn’t stop yourself from standing and you heard Teddy scream as Jaylen’s pitch made contact with your older brother.

He didn’t stop. He finished the play. His team was angry, Andrew most of all, and they destroyed the Garages the following inning and then went home. You didn’t miss the looks some of them gave you as you ran to Teddy instead, but...Teddy needed you. They didn’t need you yet, Dom had days left still but Teddy fell to his knees and begged for your forgiveness and you both cried yourselves to sleep together that night when you finally told him Dom wouldn’t make it. And Dom showed up the next morning with Andrew half in his pocket looking happier than anyone should with the specter of death hanging over them so. Really, it was for the best.

But you’re here now, in Miami, sitting in the stands waiting for your brother to die, and if living in Hellmouth made you more comfortable with death you still find that thought a tough one to sit with. He lived through yesterday but he’s out of time; he’s not going to make it to Chicago. You couldn’t stop yourself from crying this morning when you met up before the game, when he hugged you and tried to promise it would be okay and you cried even more. You never talked to Dom about the precognition but you know the rumor spread and he must have heard it—Dom always heard everything about you—and so seeing you cry in public and in front of him he must have known he was going to his death. At the time he seemed to accept it but now…he’s supposed to be up to bat next but he’s just sitting there, in the dugout, curled next to Andrew and he can absolutely get away with messing with the lineup but he can’t, you can’t let him, whatever the stupid fucking plan is it needs him and if you let him get away with living here you don’t know what will happen later—to Dom, to Andrew, to Teddy, or to anyone else—and so you break all the rules and run down and shout at him. He turns around and faces you.

“Don’t be afraid! It’s going to be okay!” You don’t know that. It’s not going to be okay. He’s going to die, or at least, go through the same pain you did a year ago, and that’s not okay. He looks at you, harder than he’s looked in years, and something else looks with him. You feel the warmth of the desert take over your bones, even though it’s all wrong for Miami the heat is here with you. Dom walks over to you, links his hand with yours through the fence. You’re crying. “I’ll see you again, big bro. Don’t be afraid.” You don’t know that either but he nods and squeezes your fingers before he turns away.

He takes a few lingering moments and kisses Andrew (kisses him goodbye) before taking his place in the lineup, well within the angle needed for a rogue umpire to do its job. You turn away but his voice calls you back, you see the umpire turning towards Dom but he’s talking to you and of course it wouldn’t let you look away. “I love you,” Dom shouts at the last moment with his eyes locked on yours—and then he’s burning.

  


######  **VI. Destination**

In the end, the Hellmouth was right. You do know.

Rewind. You got engaged a month or two after Dom died—it was the last conversation they had, Teddy told you, and he cried when you took the ring from his hand and kissed him. Dom’s…ghost? spirit? essence? Dom’s something showed up to the wedding, danced with Andrew and you watched them and hoped. It was a beautiful ceremony and a beautiful night, but you already felt the itch of years to come. You got them, though, three beautiful years of cheering for the Garages and the Beams and the Mills, two seasons without any further deaths of your loved ones (and that glorious day where Beck killed an umpire and that following night on the phone with you where she cried for all those she couldn’t protect), visiting Hellmouth to meet every new Beam and Layna at the Boston Garden and the Mills in their weird apartment building and then coming home to Seattle with Teddy. He even got a year off where you got to bring him around for a while, and somehow he never even started to Adapt, never felt the push to leave that other visitors always talk about. You were as happy as you could be, without your brother, with only the occasional message from Dom’s spirit reassuring you that the fight wasn’t over.

You did absolutely know when the beginning of the end started, though, and it started with Jaylen Hotdogfingers being swapped off the Garages, coming back, and then swapping off again. She landed on the Shoe Thieves and the Shoe Thieves made it to the finals and you didn’t dream that night but woke with that satisfied heat in the corner of your mind and you knew something was going to happen. And, well, something sure did, that awful peanut descended and folks were stolen off their teams and then the Shoe Thieves fought a god. 

Then, as if to prove to you that it was all coming to a head, your fucking dad appeared on Teddy’s team. Mike Townsend, your friend, one of the few other people in the world who understood what it was like to be meddled with by powers outside of your control constantly, vanished to the Shadows again and in his place was the father you and Dom thought abandoned you long ago. Then Gomi ate fire instead of being incinerated, and then Andrew did the same three days in a row, and literally nothing was a coincidence anymore. Dom showed up to talk to Dad and to talk to Andrew and he looked more real for both than he had since he died, and all of this is why you’re here, sitting by that rock at the edge of the Solarium again.

The Mills and the Beams both made it to the playoffs by virtue of luck but you’re relieved as hell they both got knocked out, first the Beams by the Crabs and now the Mills by the Shoe Thieves and history is repeating itself with the two in the finals and it’s your time, the Tug started pulling on you with a vengeance the moment the game ended and you got here as soon as you could. Teddy begged you to stay, Dad did too, but you made a deal and got four whole years. You got a lifetime more than Dom with his beloved, lived a decade beyond what Rhys or Vela or Scrap or Chorby or Tiana or Derrick will ever get and you’re so grateful for being given this life. You’ve accepted every gift the Hellmouth has offered as long as you’ve been alive and now it’s asking for just one thing from you in return, and how can you refuse? So you take a deep breath and lay down in the sand, stare into the same stars they see in New York, bask in the light of the moon and relax your hands by your side before you close your eyes and everything fades away.

You wake, but this isn’t what you expected even a little bit. You expected the Hellmouth and you’re not not there, you feel the warmth, but you also have all of your senses, there’s sights and sounds for all that they make little sense, bright blue haze and whispers that are somehow so loud and the sense that something is coming. At first you’re alone but as you adjust the blue haze around you starts to blur, to sharpen, to turn into figures you recognize—Jaylen. Cali. Emmett. Dom. Yaz. Landry. You call out to each of them but none respond, try to grab for Dom but you phase through him (this isn’t a change but…you hoped). You can still see the stars and the moon and you still feel warm, still comfort yourself in being part of the Hellmouth until…

GOOD LUCK, RANDALL.

The moon disappears, swallowed by some strange blackness. All the warmth vanishes and you feel—detached. But not alone.

“Randy?” Dom. You can’t cry for some reason but you can hug him back, can hug and laugh with everyone that you never thought you’d get to meet again. You pull Emmett to the side and tell him everything about the Hellmouth; he tells you about the Hall Monitor and what they’ve learned about the Shelled One. He doesn’t dream anymore, he says, but he can see a little more than everyone else. He congratulates you on your marriage. You still can’t cry but you would if you could. 

“Are Rhys and Vela here?” You haven’t seen them. There’s a lot of people here but no sign of your other former teammates.

“Somewhere. This place is bigger than you might think, Randy. There’s some kind of hierarchy here and we can only see those closest to us on the list. But we can pass messages. And your brother isn’t the only one who’s been able to visit the living. But we’ve always had to be careful. With you here though…I think something’s about to change.” He barely finishes the sentence before you feel a hook around your chest.

You come to on the field. It’s not Sixth Circle for all that the sky is full of fire, not the Solarium or Battin’ Island or The Pocket or any other field you’ve ever known. Jaylen’s on the mound and Quitter’s up to bat and _oh_. It’s your turn to fight a god, then. This is good. This is a good team, solid friends on the field and for all the horror she’s caused (you really should talk to her about it someday) Jaylen’s a great pitcher. You can’t not laugh when Yaz catches a ground from Quitter and looks at her glove in amazement, can’t do anything but cheer for Kiki getting the turn on the field she was robbed of all those years ago. You make it up to bat and with the warmth of friends and the Hellmouth inside you how could you hit anything but a homer? 

Axel and Jaylen swap and you’re trading home runs back and forth, Duffy and York and Jess followed by Dom and Seb (and you can’t even imagine how it must hurt and don’t have time to ask, what it’s like to fight with your sibling on the other side, you’re glad you aren’t finding out right here because you know you could have been) and Morrow and Kiki and Cali. More pitcher shifts, more weather shifts, you hit another homer to bat in Landry, and then you see an umpire turn and you didn’t expect that this could happen here but. Of course it could. There’s nothing in Jess’s eyes as her brother burns but cold red darkness and then it’s Scrap, Mills Scrap, in the lineup cheering for Dom and they both add home runs to the score. Yaz hits her first homer and you hit another. Should you be afraid? Almost certainly, but how can you be with your brother at your side, with Emmett and Workman and Tyreek and Monreal and Sunshine, with Axel and Jaylen trading back and forth but both playing for your side? How can you be when the umpire aims for Landry and he swallows the flame? You can feel your team’s spirit fading but can see things are much worse on the other side, and it’s the bottom of the ninth and the whole world is on the edge of collapsing when Dom steps up to bat. Everyone holds their breath as he hits one foul, and then another, and another and another and another and another and you think you might scream when you hear it before you see it, the mighty decisive crack of the bat and Dom, running, grinning, triumphantly as the ball disappears into the aether and stars explode behind your eyes and everything. Fades. To. Black.

  


######  **VII. Liberation**

You wake. Do you? Your eyes don’t feel open but they don’t feel closed either. There’s no pain, and you’re warm. You laugh. “Hi.”

THEY WILL SAY THIS VICTORY BELONGS TO YOUR BROTHER. NEVER FORGET, RANDALL MARIJUANA, THAT THIS VICTORY BELONGS TO YOU. You nod.

“So what now?”

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO HAPPEN, RANDALL?

What do you want to happen? Have you done anything you wanted since the first time you were taken in by the Hellmouth, over a decade ago? Everything you’ve done since then has been for your destiny, and you’ve achieved it. What’s next? You pause, hum to yourself, but you see it in your mind’s eye. Teddy, Dom, Andrew, Dad. Layna and Emmett and Beck and Gomi and Mike and Jaylen. Peace. Time. Happiness. You see a future—not the future, you’d like to be done with that honestly—but a future. Warmth, and silence, and summer winds.

YOU WILL NEVER RETURN TO THIS PLACE AGAIN. Oh. You’ll never be warm like this again? That’s…you want that future but the warmth of this place is a safety and peace all its own that you…don’t want to give up forever, not really. But you think about the warmth found in Teddy’s arms, in Dom’s smile, in the Experimental Greenhouse and the caves beneath the Solarium, and you think you can come to terms with that.

“Can I still come back to Hellmouth?” It laughs.

WHENEVER YOU LIKE, RANDALL. NO MATTER WHERE YOU GO, HELLMOUTH WILL ALWAYS REMAIN YOUR HOME IF YOU WISH IT. Well. That’s it then, isn’t it? 

“Drop me to New York,” you ask, and it does. Dom is there with bright blue eyes, and your horns are gone and you’re cold and flesh-colored again and nothing proves you’ll never return to the Hellmouth more than looking like your brother again does. But then there’s Teddy and Dad and Paula and the rest of the Garages who became your friends over the years, and Emmett and Gomi and Sandy and Lars and even Sutton, that horrible thing, and Yaz and Landry and Cali and Beck and Layna and everyone you’ve ever loved is going to be by your side. You get the news that there’s going to be a siesta after one last season, that it’s going to last at least four years, and you send a prayer of thanks to the Hellmouth or whatever being is out there for this, for more time, and you can’t stop laughing with joy.

Somewhere, in the back of your mind, a warmth laughs with you.


End file.
